The present invention relates to poultry cage systems and particularly to means for stabilizing feed troughs used in connection with such systems.
In poultry cage systems of the type described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,311,087, issued Mar. 28, 1967, to J. Graves, and assigned to the present assignee, the feed troughs are suspended along the front of the wire mesh cages and provide support for the cages. In modern poultry raising systems, the feed troughs are supplied with food and include conveyors extending the length of the troughs for continuously supplying food to the hens housed by the cage system. As can be appreciated, the conveyors providing the feed must lie horizontally on the floor of the feed troughs to prevent excessive wear of the troughs or fouling of the conveyors which could occur should the feed trough floors be tilted.
It has been found that maintaining the feed troughs in horizontal orientation is difficult in light of the varying load on the cages which, in turn, deflects the edge of the feed troughs connected to the cage system. This, in turn, tends to twist the feed troughs causing the feed conveyor to wear a groove in or become entangled with the sheet metal feed troughs.
Several efforts have been made to overcome this problem, one of which includes extending wire hooks from one edge of the feed troughs remote from their connection with the cage system underneath the feed trough and onto a vertically extending wire forming part of the front of the cage. Another effort is represented in my copending U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 871,821, filed Jan. 24, 1978, entitled POULTRY CAGES, and assigned to the present assignee. As shown in FIG. 8 of this application, a strip of galvanized material is employed and is attached to two vertically extending wires of the cage system in an effort to stabilize the feed trough. In application, however, both of the prior art efforts have not proven totally satisfactory due to the fact that they still permit the feed troughs to rotate from a horizontal position somewhat as the cage systems become loaded and the edge of the feed trough coupled to the cage deflects downwardly in response to such load.